English Grammar Boot Camp

How to judge what is acceptable or unacceptable in English; how to distinguish acceptable from "stylistically preferable"; how grammar often takes on larger meanings; understanding the differences and diversity within the language.

Investigating prescriptive grammar; tracing the history of specific grammatical rules and academic usage guides; noting how such guides justify right versus wrong; learning about historically famous and influential grammarians.

Diving into descriptive grammar; observing the wealth of grammatical knowledge one knows intuitively in various examples; how comparing the descriptive with the prescriptive can help one make more informed choices about usage.

How words are defined and categorized into parts of speech; how words expand or move into new categories; how nouns, verbs, adverbs and their syntax are characterized; delineating the difference between a phrase, a clause and a sentence.

Investigating countable and uncountable nouns; the details of how they are used with modifiers; delving into irregular plurals in English; observing the ways they are formed; learning about collective nouns; the question of subject-verb agreement.

Entering the world of pronouns; beginning with personal pronouns; the complications that arise around conjoined constructions; taking on interrogative and indefinite pronouns; asking questions such as whether "none" can be both singular and plural.

The question of when to use "that" as opposed to "which"; the most commonly applied rules governing these relative pronouns; opinions on the subject from notable grammarians; clauses in which relative pronouns disappear; the use of relative pronouns.

Determiners introduce nouns and create noun phrases; their key functions; how determiners are different from adjectives and pronouns; the history of capitalization; current capitalization practice; the history of the capitalized pronoun "I".

Focusing on adjectives in multiple incarnations; how adjectives turn into comparatives and superlatives; reviewing double comparatives; adjectives that change meanings; noun phrases in which the adjective appears after the noun.

Clarifying past tense versus past participle; how new irregularities creep into the verb spectrum; exploring the usage error of "lie" versus "lay"; studying verb tenses and their aspects; investigating irregular past participles.

Categorizing verbs based on how they function within the sentence; grappling with thorny usage issues, such as whether to feel "bad" or "badly"; exploring how verbs work with or without objects; learning about complex transitive verbs.

Continuing with the category of auxiliary verbs; the usage issue of "can" versus "may"; studying the workings of modal auxiliary verbs; the primary helping verbs of "be", "have" and "do"; the controversy over the auxiliary verb, "ain't".

Exploring the use of the passive voice; what distinguishes the passive voice from the active; the benefits of the passive voice in three cases; situations in which responsibility for an action is unclear; maintaining continuity; scientific writing.

Discovering the world of adverbs, which modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses and sentences; investigating intensifiers; studying the subtleties of "flat" adverbs, which have the same form as their adjective counterparts.

An immersion in conjunctions; the controversy surrounding sentences that begin with conjunctions; reviewing the functions of coordinating and subordinating conjunctions; contested uses of the conjunction "plus"; the rise of the word "slash".

Conjunctive adverbs conjoin two clauses; identifying the range of conjunctive adverbs; their benefits in formal writing; exploring notable usage issues such as those concerning "however" and "more important" versus "more importantly".

The fine points of prepositions; the issue of "different from" versus "different than"; how prepositions show relationships between words; grappling with controversies; investigating a contemporary change with the word "because".

The origins of the idea of ending a sentence with a preposition; how the practice comes to be viewed as bad usage; the views of 20th-century commentators; noting specific cases where "stranding" the preposition can add elegance to writing.

Looking closely at dangling modifiers, which are words or phrases that appear to modify something other than what is intended; investigating a variety of danglers; considering their implications for both spoken and written expression.

How to make prose writing flow; avoiding choppiness through key syntactic choices; studying the known-new contract; examining three different ways to use this principle; how to present information clearly in scientific writing.

Studying the distinction between involved discourse and informational discourse within the grammar of conversation; grasping the roles of discourse markers, which help organize discourse and manage expectations in conversation.

Punctuation acts as a fundamental component of written usage; the modern rules regarding the punctuation marks that structure sentences; highlighting the core uses of commas; considering how punctuation follows different rules in texting.

The use of apostrophes with contractions and possessives; the problems involved with nouns ending in s; how apostrophe usage can create and alleviate ambiguity; exceptions to the "standard" use of the apostrophe; the future of the apostrophe may be.

New grammatical expressions that are on the rise; the controversy they ignite within the linguistic community; English usage is a living process; language must respond to its audience and context; considering changes to watch for in the language.